To Whom Are You Drinking Right Now?

To Dean Smith who passed away last night and was evidently suffering from a form of dementia for the past few years and had been vacant from the public eye during these last period.

Dean Smith was one of the all time great college basketball coaches. I believe he set a record for all time victories by the time he retired in the late 1990's (since broken at least twice--most recently by his long time competitor, Coach K). He coached at University of North Carolina and led them to an amazingly long streak of 20+ victories every year, many ACC championships, a large number of NCAA tournament bids and two NCAA championships.

More fundamentally important he was a decent man and a courageous and leading actor on behalf of racial integration. He did that on a local level in North Carolina. He did it in his community and his church, and he did it on the basketball court providing a scholarship to one of or the first black basketball player on the UNC team, and I believe the ACC back in 1967.

Over many decades he received universal love and affection from what must be hundreds of past members of his teams. Really extraordinary levels of fondness for him from his players over the many many decades. That says a lot.

As a technical coach he was excellent devising the famous four corners offense, which was effective and confounding enough to be voided by rules changes, and swarming flows of fast breaks with both first and second waves of players.

He generated a lot of devotion. A life well lived.

to add....

I probably started watching ACC basketball since the end of the 1960's, a period during which Dean Smith had already established a dominant program. Having lived and gone to college in Maryland I became a U MD basketball fan during that period and of course found the strength of the UNC and the Duke programs endlessly frustrating. Dean Smith was the "perfect" coach at UNC. Maryland had the tempestuous and colorful Lefty Driesell in those days in the late 1960's and early 1970's.

In any case, with that background I found these paragraphs very telling.....

Once, during a coaches meeting, Dean Smith made Lefty Driesell so angry that the old Maryland coach wrote Smith a letter telling him he'd never shake his hand again.

True to his word, the next time Maryland and North Carolina played, Driesell turned away the man he liked to call "a hook-nosed little sucker."

Yet years later, when Driesell's son, Chuck, came to him for advice about coaching, Driesell had just one tip.

"I told him, 'Don't model yourself after me; model yourself after Dean,'" Driesell recalled Sunday while driving home from Duke's game against Notre Dame. "Dean always said the right thing, did the right thing. He was a true gentleman."

Time, and more the frailty of a rival, has a way of smoothing away past resentments, and so it was with Driesell and his animosity toward Smith. In the final years of Smith's life, Driesell called Smith's secretary almost weekly to check in.

To Dean Smith who passed away last night and was evidently suffering from a form of dementia for the past few years and had been vacant from the public eye during these last period.

"Other than my parents, no one had a bigger influence on my life than Coach Smith. He was more than a coach - he was my mentor, my teacher, my second father. Coach was always there for me whenever I needed him and I loved him for it. In teaching me the game of basketball, he taught me about life. My heart goes out to Linnea and their kids. We've lost a great man who had an incredible impact on his players, his staff and the entire UNC family."

Also, Ned Colt, former international and war correspondent for NBC News, died of a stroke at 58. (It was announced on the 12th but I haven't seen a date of death.) He had left NBC to do humanitarian work in recent years. I saw a brief mention in a news aggregation newsletter and otherwise wouldn't have known.

To Malcolm Boyd, activist, author, and one of the earliest Episcopal priest to come out as gay. GLBTQ people--both Christian and otherwise--owe him a debt of gratitude for his courage and grace when being openly gay--and Christian, to boot--was still nearly unthinkable.

And to John Steinbruck, former pastor of Luther Place Memorial Church here in DC, a founder of Lutheran Volunteer Corps, and of N Street Village, which pioneered ministry with the homeless back in the 1970s. The changes we see now along the 14th Street corridor are perhaps unimaginable without the fierce commitment of this man to justice and care for the most vulnerable, particularly women. Indeed, everyone who's enjoying a drink along that street tonight or enjoying their shiny new apartments should lift a glass in his honor--and perhaps think for a second of those nearby who could never dream of spending $12+ for a craft cocktail or living in a $3,000-a-month apartment.

To the West End Cinema. Closing at the end of March. We enjoyed many a film there that couldn't be found elsewhere in the vicinity.

But, Levin said, for several months the theater has been “treading water financially, and we have looming significant increases in our occupancy costs that we simply can’t cover from operations.”

This is a real loss for independent and important films in DC. And, as the quoted part of the WaPo article indicates, it's likely at least partly the same fatal blow that threatens many restaurants: rising rents.

To the West End Cinema. Closing at the end of March. We enjoyed many a film there that couldn't be found elsewhere in the vicinity.

We might raise a glass to memorialize the death of the movie theatre in general. The one that I still miss the most is the old AFI theatre at the Kennedy Center. I loved that institution and still don't understand why they killed it off. The deaths of the various commercial movie houses that I've loved and lost are at least understandable in market terms, but that just doesn't apply to AFI at the KC. I spent so many hundreds of happy hours there. Here's to those memories.

Absolutely! Loved it there. Also, the independent cinema in Van Ness, next to where Le Chat Noir is now. Saw a great documentary on Hank Greenberg there...

This confuses me. Le Chat Noir is in Tenleytown, not Van Ness. The movie theatre that used to be nearby was not next to it, but the next block down, and was the Outer Circle 1 and 2, and not an independent cinema, although it was mostly programmed as an "art house". There used to be some crappy little multiplexes in Van Ness, but never an independent that I can recall. The Outer Circle was next to the venerable Round Table restaurant on Wisconsin. Both buildings were eventually torn down and replaced by a bank and its parking lot. Such is progress.

This confuses me. Le Chat Noir is in Tenleytown, not Van Ness. The movie theatre that used to be nearby was not next to it, but the next block down, and was the Outer Circle 1 and 2, and not an independent cinema, although it was mostly programmed as an "art house". There used to be some crappy little multiplexes in Van Ness, but never an independent that I can recall. The Outer Circle was next to the venerable Round Table restaurant on Wisconsin. Both buildings were eventually torn down and replaced by a bank and its parking lot. Such is progress.

That's right; I remember the Hank Greenberg movie played there for some time. I only went to the West End once, in its earlier incarnation, and I was appalled by the sightlines, not to mention a tiny screen that some home theaters put to shame. But I also had some great times at the Visions theater, not least taking Bob's Filipino mother to see a documentary on Imelda Marcos. The New America Foundation also sponsored some good pre-release screenings there, including "Thirteen." For now, I'm chomping at the bit for the National Gallery of Art's theater to reopen.

This confuses me. Le Chat Noir is in Tenleytown, not Van Ness. The movie theatre that used to be nearby was not next to it, but the next block down, and was the Outer Circle 1 and 2, and not an independent cinema, although it was mostly programmed as an "art house". There used to be some crappy little multiplexes in Van Ness, but never an independent that I can recall. The Outer Circle was next to the venerable Round Table restaurant on Wisconsin. Both buildings were eventually torn down and replaced by a bank and its parking lot. Such is progress.

To the Key Theatre in Georgetown. And to The Rocky Horror Picture Show at said venue.

The 8 year old already hates it when Mr. BLB and I start rattling off all the movies we saw at all the great (and not so great) lost theaters of DC.

Of course the Key and the Biograph. And the Outer Circle (Tenley). But there used to be a $1 theater at Wisconsin and Brandywine. And the "purple theater" in the Fannie Mae building. And that awful dinky theater at Wisconsin and Van Ness that AU now owns. And the weird screens at the Dupont Theater. And the theater on CT where the Benneton is now. And the $1 movies at the Foundry. And all the movies I saw at Union Station when I didn't have air conditioning.

We snuck into the West End a few weeks ago for one last film. I think they haven't cleaned the floors in a decade. Most of the seats are now folding chairs, and they were running a recent film FROM DVD rather than projection. Glad I didn't pay for those tickets.

AFI at Kennedy Center closed simply because they opened their own building in Silver Spring.

AFI at Kennedy Center closed simply because they opened their own building in Silver Spring.

Wow, is that not true. The AFI National Film Theatre, one of the best rooms for screening films that I've ever seen, closed in 1998. The AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring opened in 2003. Even if one event had led immediately to the other, moving the AFI theatre from the Kennedy Center to Silver Spring makes about as much sense as moving the Metropolitan Opera from Lincoln Center to Secaucus.

I'm sure others' experiences will vary a lot from mine, but I must have seen at least 100 films at the Kennedy Center incarnation of the AFI theatre. I've still never been to the Silver Spring version.

Just because Silver didn't open the day after the KC closed doesn't mean they weren't related actions. My recollection was that they were looking for a permanent home towards the end of their KC contract, and it simply took that long to get the project done.

FWIW, the Silver is IMO the best theatre in the area right now. You really should check it out.